Search 500,000 Documents, Review 160,000 Pages In 20 Hours, And Then Do It All Over AgainQuentin Hardy, 06.24.02

The detailed life of a patent examiner.

"Sometimes I'm the judge and jury," says Patrick Nolan, an eager man presiding over 175 different claims for the advancement of civilization. But that is not the real pleasure of judging invention, he says. "I get to see things before they happen."

Nolan, and some 3,300 other patent examiners like him, are our nation's official arbiters of what constitutes invention, what a person or a company may claim they have done that no one has done before. At least, not on the record. These Americans (all are required to be citizens) are the gatekeepers of our economy's future, Nolan declares as he looks back at more than 6.3 million approved inventions, and forward to an onrush of new claims.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) receives 2 million documents yearly, including 375,000 applications, amendments to existing claims, and pleas for consideration or appeals for reconsideration. Those join more than 190,000 patents that will be granted this year, in regular announcements each Tuesday. Every one of the new and pending claimants wants attention now; the cramped and frantic postal facility, occupying one of 18 USPTO buildings dispersed over a one-mile swath in Crystal City, Virginia, is the world's largest recipient of Express Mail. The office window gets particularly busy around midnight, just before it shuts.

To that urgency add a dizzying increase in complexity of new claims. A typical patent is now about 20 to 40 pages, up from the single-page descriptions of 1790, when Thomas Jefferson and two friends met monthly as America's first patent examiners (approving three inventions that year, the first for converting wood ashes into farm fertilizer). Some biotechnology patents now carry 160,000 pages of information.

"I love the tradition of this office," says James Rogan, a former Los Angeles County prosecutor, state court judge, and congressman who served on intellectual-property subcommittees and who was appointed last year as director of the USPTO. On the walls outside his office, framed like portraits, hang renderings of early patents--each contained on a single sepia--toned page. "We get CDs now containing the equivalent of 72,000 pages. The number and fundamental complexity of our patents are becoming too great." In the 1980s, efficiency was improved, he says, cutting the wait time from filing to approval from 25 months to 18 months. But the wait has crept back to more than 24 months. One difficulty in trying to streamline the process, Rogan adds, is that "the complexity of patents in the time of Reagan was fishhook design compared to now."

Not only did the annual growth rate of the number of applications expand from 8% in the 1990s to 12% in 2000 and 2001, applications for complex biotech patents have jumped 24% during the past two years. Electrical-technologies applications have risen even higher.

About half of the 400 people working in the biotech, organic chemistry, and pharmaceutical section--Nolan's section--have Ph.D.s. But they still struggle to keep up with the latest developments in their fields. Nolan, who got his doctorate in biology in 1997, specializes in physiology, endocrinology, and immunology patents.

He joined the patent office immediately rather than pursue a postdoctorate in pure research. The starting pay, $45,000 a year, was twice what he was offered at a competing postdoctorate job; today he makes almost $90,000 and within reason gets to make his own hours. "I get every Friday off, and the benefits are good," he says, sipping a can of diet grapefruit soda. "I get one hour every two weeks to stay on top of the art."

In his sparse office, with two houseplants, a baseball poster, and one of the largest databases available, he seems firmly in control, even in the path of the avalanche of invention. More than anything, he depends on the USPTO's technological system.

Nolan's computer accesses vital information on all approved patents; the complete information of eight large industrial databases, each following the latest published research; more than 700 commercial databases offering less-rigorous information; 8,000 electronic books; and 700 journals.

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